


Bonding

by windydays



Series: Equilibrium [2]
Category: The Boyz (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Biology Class, Fluff, M/M, freshmen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-08-02 20:10:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16311926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windydays/pseuds/windydays
Summary: The first semester at university is a challenge for everyone, and for Juyeon it is no exception. His biology class just adds to his stress. However, it gives him the opportunity to get closer to Jaehyun, who makes it bearable.





	Bonding

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to write this as I started stanning them recently! Hope you all like it! Support The Boyz!

After sprinting the stairs to the third floor as fast as he could, Juyeon gets to his Biology class fifteen minutes late. Maybe he would’ve gotten there in time if it wasn’t for him snoozing the alarm three times. He shouldn’t have stayed watching whatever video YouTube recommended him until midnight, but he needed some time to disconnect from all the university stress.  
  
This is the first semester for Juyeon, a pre-med student. All his other courses apart from Biology are basic ones but still time-consuming. The day before he was given a Humanities homework where he had to watch two entire documentaries about Prehistory and compare them in an essay. That’s actually how he found himself on YouTube, but he certainly didn’t watch them.

Now, finishing the sandwich he has been eating the entire way to the classroom, he opens the door, to see just two free seats. _That one is too far away, so let’s take this one_. He sits on the corner of one of the tables, beside a classmate he had seen many times before but never crossed a word with. The classmate looks at him for a brief moment, flashing a smile in his direction before turning back to look at the board.

“Have I missed anything important?”

“No,” the classmate turns again to face Juyeon. “Actually, yeah. She said she’s going to give us a project, but will give more details at the end of class.”

“Oh, another project,” Juyeon sighs. His classmate smiles brighter than before in response.

Juyeon goes through a quick existential crisis at the news of another important assignment, but he brushes it off to set his mind on the class.

“The first type of macromolecules we are going to study are the carbohydrates,” the professor starts, making the entire classroom go silent except for her voice.

The students fervently take notes, and Juyeon is no exception. It’s a race against time and the professor’s will. He tries to copy all the information from the slides, but the professor sometimes passes them too quickly. Some students complain, but the professor doesn’t give in. Juyeon is indeed a bit pissed off too, but maintaining his cool is his specialty. He finds comical how the classmate beside him just laughs it off. The other two on the table, who he assumes are his friends, do the same. Juyeon had seen the trio in other classes, but he can’t remember any of their names.

The professor gets to the final slide of the presentation, which showed some details about the project they were told about before the class started.

“This project will be done in pairs, so choose your partners,” the professors says. Juyeon huffs, perhaps a bit too roughly. Juyeon’s best friends, Eric and Jacob, don’t take any class with him, so he’s been practically left alone for his first semester. At first, Juyeon thought it would be a good opportunity to socialize with more people, but he hasn’t had the motivation nor time to do so.

While looking at his classmates finding a partner in less than a minute, Juyeon keeps agonizingly waiting for someone to be left alone to become their partner.

“Hey, would you like to be my partner?” The classmate besides him asks Juyeon.

“Uhm, yeah, sure!” Juyeon’s mood steadily improves, his mind taking its time to realize he had finally found a partner, who fortunately seems nice.

“I’m sorry you have to do this with someone else. You didn’t seem too happy when she said it was going to be done in pairs,” his classmate says.

“Oh, no. Don’t think that. I’m just annoyed that my friends left me alone and I don’t know anyone here.”

“Finally someone that I can relate to,” his classmate points to the couple behind him. “As soon as she said ‘in pairs’, I knew I had to find someone else.”

Juyeon giggles at his classmate’s expression. Although his partner had the fortune to be taking a class with his friends, right now he looks more like a third wheel than part of the group.

“Your name is Juyeon, right?”

Juyeon is taken aback by how his partner knows his name. A sense of shame takes over him because he has no idea what his classmate’s name is.

“Yeah, and yours?”

“Choose a topic from the list I just sent you through email and tell me which one you chose. See you on the next class,” the professor says before Juyeon’s partner could answer.

“I’m Jaehyun,” he answers, closing the notebook in front of him.

Jaehyun’s friends stand up, Jaehyun and Juyeon following them.  

“Oh, so you are going to be Jaehyun’s partner?” One of the friends asks with a worried look.

“Younghoon, stop. I’m not a bad partner,” Jaehyun says, walking towards the door along the other three.

“Well, if he-“ Younghoon gets interrupted by Jaehyun.

“So these are my friends,” Jaehyun air quotes. “Younghoon and Changmin. They are dating, so they usually leave me alone,” he shrugs. “You two, this is the luckiest guy in the world, in other words, my partner, Juyeon.”  

“Aren’t you going too fast there? The b- Juyeon is going to get scared,” Younghoon says.

“Could you please shut up?” Jaehyun starts walking along Juyeon, leaving his friends behind. “See you, Changmin!”

Juyeon laughs at the seemingly love-hate relationship between Younghoon and Jaehyun. Despite being at each other’s throat, there’s no real tension between them. In contrast, Changmin, seems to be pretty chill. Maybe he doesn’t like getting in, or he has tried many times and has failed to stop the bickering.

“Are you free now?” Jaehyun asks while going down the stairs.

“Yes, my next class starts at eleven.”

“That’s a horrible time to take a class.”

“Tell me about it,” Juyeon sighs.

“Would you like to go to the library?” Jaehyun asks. “So we can choose a topic and plan when to meet?

“Yeah, let’s go.”

\---------------

The meeting at the library proved to be fruitful. They chose DNA as their topic, and decided to meet regularly during the evening at Juyeon’s room. That means that Juyeon’s daily hangouts with Eric and Jacob will come to a halt until the project is finished, but he’s sure they’ll understand. Even though he has felt comfortable with Jaehyun so far, Juyeon is a bit nervous. A classmate he just got to know is going to be at his room later in the day. Jaehyun had suggested to meet as soon as possible, in order to finish the project early, and Juyeon agreed. Saying that Juyeon isn’t somewhat excited would be a lie, though. He found the time spent with Jaehyun to be pretty enjoyable.

While Juyeon is waiting for Jaehyun to arrive at his dorm room, he remembers he has to watch the Humanities documentaries. The assignment is due next week, but the documentaries are one hour and a half long each, so he wants to get over that soon. When he’s about to text Jaehyun to tell him if they could postpone their meeting for tomorrow, someone knocks on the door.

“It’s Jaehyun!”

Juyeon goes to open the door. His hand starts sweating when he sees Jaehyun in more casual clothes than earlier. Sporting a quite oversized gray hoodie and sweatpants, Jaehyun makes his way inside the room.

“See why I told you to not meet at mine? This is impeccably clean in comparison,” Jaehyun softly laughs. “And are you okay, did I interrupt anything?”

“No, no. I’m fine. I just remembered I have to watch two documentaries, but that can wait,” Juyeon says, his stomach feeling sick by the sudden revival of the butterflies he had long thought dead.

“Oh! What are the documentaries about?”

“Prehistory. It’s for Huma-”

“Oh my god! I love Prehistory documentaries! All kind of documentaries, to be honest!”

“Really?” Juyeon furrows his eyebrows in disbelief. _How can someone like that?_

“Yeah! But I can leave if you want to watch them,” Jaehyun slightly pouts.

“Uhm,” Juyeon hesitates. His mind is telling him what to do, but he struggles to do so. “W- would you watch them with me?”

“Sure!” Jaehyun replies, as if he had been waiting for that question.

Jaehyun sits on the bed, leaning his back on the wall. Juyeon puts the laptop in the middle, and sits on the other side. It’s not the most comfortable position, but better than sitting side to side. Juyeon quickly searches for the documentary, and plays it.

“Wait,” Jaehyun stops the video. “What are you supposed to do with these documentaries? Just watch them or do you have to write something?”

“I have to write an essay comparing the Pale-something-”

“Paleolithic and Neolithic.”

“Y-yeah, that,” Juyeon says, shocked at how easily the other figured it out.

“Do you want me to briefly explain you the differences between them, so the documentaries make more sense?”

“Yes, please. Go ahead.”

“Ok, so you know the cavemen, the paintings in caves, the tribes, the nomads, right?”

“Yeah, that’s the first one, isn’t it?”

“Exactly. The era where _Homo_ species lived in caves and moved frequently in search of food is called Paleolithic. You could see it as the beginning of humankind.”

“And the other one? Neolithic?”

“Yes, the Neolithic was the era where our human species, _Homo sapiens sapiens_ , took over. In this era, humans discovered the agriculture. This made them become sedentary. They no longer needed to move in search of food because they could grow it themselves.”

“Oh, interesting,” Juyeon nods.

“Yes! Also, in the Neolithic, the sense of property came to life. Remember this when you take Social Sciences because you are going to talk about this.”

Juyeon is awed at how serious and determined his partner just looked. The outgoing, all-smiles Jaehyun had disappeared for a moment, making way for a more mature Jaehyun to appear. The fact that Jaehyun knows all this despite also being in his first semester irks Juyeon’s curiosity.

“How do you know all of this? Have you taken this class already?”

“Yeah, while in high school. I took it as an elective, and now I don’t need to take it here.”

“Woah, you’re smart. I wish I could have the same interest as you to learn about this,” Juyeon laughs.

“Don’t worry,” Jaehyun pats Juyeon’s shoulder. “I’m sure there are things you like to learn about,” he smiles. “Should we start watching the video now?”

Juyeon hums in response, and Jaehyun clicks on the play button. From time to time, Jaehyun stops the video to further explain what was shown. As the documentary goes on, Juyeon loses focus. He’s finding the documentary interesting, but the way Jaehyun’s eyes sparkle while watching something he considered so trivial makes it impossible to concentrate on the video.

“Why don’t you study this? You seem to enjoy this a lot,” Juyeon says out of the blue, stopping the video so they don’t miss anything.

“Ah,” Jaehyun sighs. “My family wants me to become a doctor, so it’s not like I have any other option. But don’t worry, I like medicine. I just have many interests.”

“You should explore them, though. I’m going into medicine because I don’t see myself doing anything else. Remember to think about your happiness first,” Juyeon wholeheartedly says. The honesty in Juyeon’s words makes Jaehyun’s cheeks flush. It had been a long time since someone had prioritized his feelings over someone else’s.

Two hours later, and one documentary and a half down, Juyeon struggles to keep his eyes open. The six hours of sleep that he had gotten the night before were getting to him. Jaehyun notices Juyeon slumbering, smiling at the adorable sight.

“Juyeon, I think you should go to sleep now.”

“O-oh, yeah,” Juyeon struggles to answer, his mind too blurry from the lack of rest.

“I’m gonna get going now,” Jaehyun stands up from the bed. “If you want, we can finish the documentary tomorrow, and then start working on the project. It’s not like you aren’t already good at DNA, right?” He says, making his way to the door.

“Okay,” Juyeon agrees. After calmly laying on his bed, he finds himself struggling to sleep when he realizes the hidden meaning Jaehyun’s words could’ve had.

\----------------

“We’re almost finishing this,” Jaehyun starts writing the fifteenth slide of the presentation. Juyeon, sitting right beside him, looks at how the other passes the information from his notebook to the screen.

“It’s getting late, though,” Juyeon yawns. He stretches his arms, throwing one of them over Jaehyun’s neck.

“You’re heavy, and I need to concentrate. If you aren’t doing anything, please let me work in peace,” Jaehyun whines. His lips form a smile, assuring Juyeon that he was just playing.

The two pre-med students had gotten closer during the past three weeks. When they were given the project, they agreed to meet every other day, but their meetings turned daily. One day, Jaehyun went through the struggle of making his room decent to invite Juyeon. The first day he was invited there, Juyeon finished the cleaning process as the room was still too messy for his standards. Jaehyun has maintained his room relatively clean after that, but they still prefer to meet at Juyeon’s.

The pair hasn’t finished the project yet because they actually started working on it two days prior. The first two weeks were spent doing anything but researching information about the class. Sometimes they would watch a movie together and discuss how their days went, or both of them would be on their own little world. When they didn’t cross words, they would just enjoy each other’s company, which had proven to be a relief for Juyeon’s stress. The sleepless nights that were so common during Juyeon’s first month were left behind. In contrast, Jaehyun started to become a bit more distracted. He would think off Juyeon at any random time of the day, but nothing he couldn’t control. After a conversation with Younghoon and Changmin, he came to the conclusion that he has been harboring some feelings for Juyeon. He decided to not take action just yet, despite Younghoon’s claims that it could be too late.

“Who’s going to start the presentation tomorrow?” Juyeon leans his head over Jaehyun’s shoulder, who doesn’t whine this time.

“I can do it unless I have to pronounce deoxy- deoxyribo- ugh! You know, what I mean,” Jaehyun sighs.

“Deoxyribonucleic acid. Leave Biology to me,” Juyeon smirks, leaning over the wall.  “After all, I’m good at it, right?”

“I- I guess you are,” Jaehyun shyly smiles.

Jaehyun keeps working on the laptop, while Juyeon starts to doze off. Minutes later, Juyeon falls to his side, snoring softly. Jaehyun notices and stops typing. He takes some time to admire Juyeon’s delicate, yet striking features. His long hair seems to need a haircut already, but the brown locks falling over his forehead makes him look cuter than usual. Jaehyun controls his urges to play with Juyeon’s hair, and goes back to finish the last details of the presentation. When Jaehyun is about to leave, he calls Juyeon several times, but he doesn’t respond. His only sign of life is his chest moving in unison with his breathes. Not wanting to disrupt Juyeon’s sleep, Jaehyun decides to kiss him softly on his forehead. He doesn’t want to imagine things, but he swears he saw Juyeon smile right after he kissed him.

The sun goes up, and the day of the presentation finally arrives. Most of the students get to class on time, but none want to break the ice except for one pair: Younghoon and Changmin. The entire classroom could see how comfortable they are around each other, including the professor. There were no volunteers after, so Younghoon called for his dear friend Jaehyun to go next. Nerves made them mispronounce some words at first, but they got the hang of it and finished the presentation on a high note.

Every student would feel relieved after getting over such a project, but neither of them could say that. Now there would be no excuse to meet after class. The moment Jaehyun sat down on his seat, he decided that it was time to follow Younghoon’s advice. The class feels eternal after they finish their presentation, but the professor finally dismisses them. As they had been doing during the past three weeks, they get out of the classroom together. Younghoon and Changmin bid them goodbye, and leave first. The other two keep walking towards the library as usual.

“We finally finished that, huh?” Juyeon says.

“Yeah. Time passed really quickly.”

“Does that mean you won’t come over anymore?” Juyeon slows down.

“Yeah, I guess. There’s no need for that,” Jaehyun slightly pouts, faking disappointment. He was waiting for that question. Juyeon had just made his plan easier.

“Oh,” Juyeon lowers his head.

“Let’s meet at the cinema today,” Jaehyun bluntly says. Juyeon stops walking, his eyes widening before disappearing into an eye smile.

“Are you asking me out?”

“Yes, let that be our first official date,” Jaehyun returns the smile.

“Thanks for the goodnight kiss yesterday, by the way.”

“Wait,” Jaehyun almost shouts. “So you did notice?”

“Yeah,” Juyeon chuckles, “maybe next time you could kiss me-”

It seems both were too focused on each other, as Juyeon stops when he notices they had entered the library. All eyes on them, both can’t help but to turn around in embarrassment. Contrary to Juyeon, Jaehyun sees the funny part of the incident. He’s quick to turn all smiles, wrapping his arm around Juyeon. Jaehyun brings him closer, almost hugging him, and kisses him on the cheek.

“You’re such an adorable mess,” Jaehyun pinches the other’s cheek, “but I like you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Any kind of feedback would be greatly appreciated!


End file.
